Snowden: another Assange?

Photo credits: The Guardian

Datagate is perhaps the first real scandal of the Obama era. A planetary scoop signed by the British newspaper, the Guardian, one of Prism, the system by which the NSA, National Security Agency, as well as the FBI, have been accessing for at least six years the telephone communications of Americans and servers of nine big companies of the world Web, from Facebook to Skype.

The Guardian revealed its source through a video: Edward Snowden.

It seems that the young man has worked for the NSA for the last four years, specifically in subcontracting, thanks to the contracts signed by the Agency for National Security with some private investigation groups, including the one in which he was the mole. The revelation of his identity was wanted by Snowden himself: “I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said in the video interview to the British newspaper. “I do not want the attention of the public, because I do not want this story to be a story about me. I want to make a story about what the government [the U.S.] is doing, “said Snowden. A brilliant life, a salary of 200 thousand dollars a year, a house in Hawaii with his girlfriend. All was sacrificed “because I can’t, in good faith, allow the U.S. government to destroy the privacy, freedom of the Internet and basic freedoms of the people in the world with this massive surveillance system that they have built in secret.”

Edward Snowden would like to stay in Russia. He has asked the NGOs for the defense of human rights, to convene in a meeting at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, to help him achieve his request for asylum in Russia.

For Snowden, seeking asylum in Russia is a forced decision, said the Ria Novosti agency, citing sources present at the meeting, due to the inability to reach one of the Latin American countries that said were willing to accept him. And Snowden, and American citizen, was deprived of his passport by U.S. authorities who have revoked his document.

Last Friday evening, U.S. President Obama phoned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The two, according to the release of the White House, discussed “a number of security issues and bilateral relations, including the status of Edward Snowden».

But the U.S. has already raised its voice through a firm statement by the State Department declaring that the United States is disappointed by the fact that Russia has facilitated the meeting of Edward Snowden, the “mole” of DataGate, with human rights activists and media in Moscow. In addition, if Russia decides to giveg him asylum “problems would arise in the relations between Washington and Moscow.”

The Kremlin, on the other hand, through the words of Putin’s spokesman, stated that it had not yet received the new request of Snowden but reiterated that the conditions remain the same. In the meantime, Snowden has stated that the conditions of his stay in the airport of Sheremetyevo airport are good and to feel safe inside the airport.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post launches a new alarm: Snowden has also gained access to “sensitive files relating to espionage operations against Chinese leaders and other sensitive targets.” “We are very concerned – explains the NSA – The more things become public, the more we lose our abilities. “